There are two reasons why the British Masonic conspiracy plunged America into civil war. First, British bankers wanted to establish a permanent central bank under their total control. Second, British Freemasonry wanted to divide powerful America into two weak nations for easy conquest. Information on the latter half of the plan was first published in “The Present Attempt to Dissolve the American Union: A British Aristocratic Plot” (1862), by Samuel Morse (1791-1872), an American artist and inventor, who was also an American counter-intelligence specialist.

Against this British intrusion into American politics, finance, and industry, General Albert Pike initiated the southern rebellion. In 1859 the Southern Jurisdiction of Freemasonry founded the Knights of the Golden Circle as a front to direct the insurrection.

Had it not been for Abraham Lincoln, English Freemasonry would have succeeded. When Lincoln restored the Union, the British Brotherhood, out of revenge, plotted his assassination. The Knights of the Golden Circle, bankrolled by British Masonic interests, selected John Wilkes Booth, a 33rd degree Mason and member of Mazzini´s Young America, for the task.

Freemason Edwin Stanton was assigned to cover up Masonic involvement in the crime. Immediately after Lincoln´s assassination, Stanton ordered military blockades on all roads out of Washington, D.C., except one — the road Booth was known to have taken for his escape route. Stanton then arranged for a drunk man to be found, similar in build and appearance to Booth. This man was to be murdered and his body burned in a barn adjacent to the only road not guarded by the military. Stanton just happened to be on that road when he “found” the murdered man, certifying that the charred body was the remains of John Wilkes Booth. The real John Wilkes Booth escaped.

After these events, the Knights were soon exposed to the Military Commission that heard evidence on the Lincoln assassination as the secret force behind both the Civil War and the assassination. Original documents relating to the president´s assassination are still locked up in the archives of the Defense Department and are not available to researchers today.

Directly involved in the plot were 33rd degree Freemason and British Prime Minister Henry Palmerston (died in 1865); 33rd degree Freemason John Wilkes Booth; Freemason Judah P. Benjamin, the British Masonic banker´s mouthpiece who gave the order for Lincoln´s assassination; and Jacob Thompson, former Interior Secretary in the Buchanan administration, who withdrew $180.000 from the Bank of Montreal in Canada to set the plot in motion. (Benjamin and Thompson both fled to England to avoid apprehension.) And Freemason Edwin Stanton prepared a cover-up that compares in audacity with the 1963 Warren Commission cover-up of the Kennedy assassination.

The exposure of the Knights was so celebrated following the 1865 conspiracy trials that in the spring of 1867, Albert Pike and a small group of former Confederate generals met in the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. to change the name of the Knights of the Golden Circle to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The Knight´s new name was taken from the Greek word “Kuklos,” which means “circle.”

Under its new name, the Klan attempted to rekindle the Civil War by instigating riots throughout the South. The notorious outlaw Jesse James (1847-1882) was a 33rd degree Freemason and a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, which had been assigned the task by Albert Pike of robbing Northern banks to fund this new war. It has been estimated that Jesse and the other members of the Knights had buried over $7 billion in gold all over the western states.

“When the Confederacy surrendered to the Union forces, Albert Pike was determined to start another Civil War so that South could win. He founded the Ku Klux Klan, which instigated riots throughout the South in an attempt to disrupt reconstruction and incite a second Civil War. Pike gave Klansman Jesse James the assignment of robbing Northern banks in order to get money to fund this war. It is estimated that Jesse James and other Klansmen buried seven billion dollars in gold all over the western states. (“Scarlet and the Beast,” Vol. 3, pages 76-77)

“Pike the old Confederate general, was a wily strategist who knew that if he could leave behind a secret terrorist society in the south to fight against freedom for black people as a rear guard action, the south’s defeat might not be in vain.” (“Masonry,” page 192)